


Ashes

by voasshekh



Category: dan and phil
Genre: Angst, Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-02-12 13:33:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12960336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voasshekh/pseuds/voasshekh





	Ashes

Phil woke up that night to the fire alarm blaring, and Dan shaking him awake. “PHIL!” He could hear Dan coughing, pulling him barely up across the hall. Phil only started to realize his surroundings as he was halfway out of the room.

“Wha?” he muttered to no one, understanding soon after as he left the bedroom to see flames shooting up in the hallway.

“Phil, Phil, come on, move,” he heard Dan from beside him, pushing him away from the flames down the stairs. He started running down them until he turned back and realized that his husband wasn’t beside him.

“Dan?” He called back.

“Just run!” Dan yelled, running towards the flames as they grew higher around him, as an earsplitting shriek echoed through the air.

“ELLA!” Phil yelled, caught by the flames separating him, his husband, and their two-year-old daughter.

“RUN!” he heard, and Phil listened, bounding down flights of stairs as quickly as he could. He ran outside, not caring that he looked a mess, not caring that he was crying and coughing and things were literally exploding behind him. He only cared about finding someone, anyone, to save his family.

He ran towards a fireman, he had no idea what he was saying, just pleading. He stopped dead in his tracks, though, as the fireman shook his head.

“It’s going down! We can’t send in any men!”

Somewhere, subconsciously, he understood what was going on, but his sleep and smoke-addled brain refused to listen. People came up to him, pulling him away from the building. He ended up across the street, next to a fire truck on his knees.

“Please, please,” he didn’t even know he was speaking anymore. He just stared at the building, more and more flames leaping out of it, but no family to be seen.

“GET BACK!” came a yell from in front of him, people scrambling to move out of the way. With a groan, the building started to fall, crumbling in on itself, until the building itself was screaming. And then there was nothing.

***

Dan coughed, ignoring the heat flying up around him, set on finding his daughter. His feet followed the familiar path down the hall, where his beautiful little girl was screaming.

“Ella?” he called as he reached the doorway, rushing through smoke to the crib. Her little coughs filled the air as he lifted her small body into his arms.

“I’ve got you, love, it’s alright,” he murmured, not quite sure if he was calming his daughter or himself.

Wrapping her small form into his gangly arms, Dan turned quickly from her bed and moved to get through the door, which by then was beginning to flicker with flames.   
He ducked his head and started to run, through the hallway and down the incessant flights of stairs.

The building lets out a loud creak, Dan cursing his inability to exercise because now it wasn’t just his life dependent on his ability to move quickly, but his daughter’s too.

He was almost there, he had one flight left to the door of the apartment building. 

The building itself seemed to be screaming in the weight of the flames. The walls were beginning to crackle around him, almost as if alive, moving with the flames.

He was almost there, just across the lobby was a parade of sirens, barely audible over the sounds of well-fueled flame, the very skeleton of the building ripping apart.

He was almost there…

***

Ella was just a month old when Dan and Phil brought her home. They’d been married two years, and they knew all that was left to complete their family was a little one.

They’d received a letter from one of their viewers, asking for help. She’d gotten pregnant, and needed someone, anyone she could trust to take the baby. As soon as Phil had finished reading, he’d told Dan they were having a baby. No discussion, Phil’s heart had gone into the same mode as when he saw the cute pictures of puppies on Twitter but this time he could actually do something to save them.

After a long discussion about impulsivity, Dan agreed that it was time to bring a baby into their lives.

When they first saw her the day she was born, both men started to cry. She may not have been theirs biologically, but she was their little girl. Phil was scared to hold her for almost a week, terrified that he’d drop the little bundle of blankets and baby. She stayed at the hospital for a month, long enough for the legal papers to go through and the tiny baby they’d visited every day to officially become Ella Fiona Howell-Lester.

The first thing she did when she got home was cry. Then she cried some more. When she was hungry, or tired, or just because she could. One night, when they hadn’t slept more than two straight hours in almost three weeks, Dan’s poor mother found the three of them all laying on the floor in tears together.

But somehow they got through it. The three of them were perfect, they made everything work. They may not have been a conventional family in the slightest, but the two men would do anything for their little Ella, and she unknowingly made their lives whole.

Now that she was two, she had started to talk. There was a long argument over who got to be “dad”, and who was “papa”. Dan won the title of “dad” over what may have been their most aggressive Mario Kart match to date, but Phil got is small revenge. Ella’s first word was “Papa,” which Phil didn’t think he’d ever stop gloating over.

Since those first few babbles, she now never stopped talking. Until those few and far between moments of sleep, the home was always abuzz with stories and conversations only half understood. But through all of the baby gibberish, there was always a big hug and smile for “Papa” and “Dada.”

***

Phil was sobbing as he stared at the still smoking pile of rubble that was- used to be- his home. He’d somehow managed to get let out of the hospital quickly, as he’d been unhurt physically. He’d immediately gone back, though, to the place his life had been ripped apart.  
His fingers toyed the ring on his left hand, the memories flooding through his head. Meeting Dan, dating, finally getting engaged and then married. Then a baby, who was now his little girl- had. Had been, his little girl. He couldn’t get it through his head. He couldn’t believe they were really gone.

Firefighters crawled over the destroyed remnants of the building, hosing out the last few remaining bits of flame. Some were beginning to search for the dead, slowly removing layers of charred material. Phil stared, watching each piece move, wishing they found them and yet simultaneously wishing it was all a bad dream and they’d come running up behind him to surprise him.

Little bits of memory floated through his mind.

***

“Dada, Papa, lookie!!!” Ella yelled, jumping up and down waving a piece of paper in the air.

“What is it, lovebug?” Dan asked, trying to catch the flailing child to see what she was trying to show him.

She set the paper down on the table, covered in scribbles in various colors. There were spirals of blue, green, black, and pink, crisscrossing all across the paper.  
Phil moved over to the pair, laughing. “What’d you draw?”

Ella smiled, climbing on the table next to her art. “Lookie,” she said again, pointing to it. “Papa,” to the blue and green scribble, “Ewa,” to the pink scribble, and finally “Dada” to the back one.

Both men laughed, Dan pulling out his phone to savor the moment.

“Hey, Ella, can we take a picture?” he asked, trying to pull the squirmy two-year-old over towards him.

“Dada!” she yelled, smiling for the picture. It was Phil’s favorite picture of the three of them.

***

It was like Phil could still hear her in his mind, calling “Dada” to the camera. He took a deep breath through his tears, trying to calm himself. Hallucinating his daughter’s voice wouldn’t do him any good.

But it wasn’t going away, he could still hear crying, his little one yelling for her dad, and it sounded like it was coming from- but it couldn’t be. There was no way anyone survived that.

Yet the men were all moving towards one part of the building, yelling. Phil thought he heard something about bodies, someone yelling, and he was off running towards the building.

“Ella?!” he called, climbing onto the rumble along with the workmen. No one cared, not now that they might need to save someone. “Ella, love?” he yelled, almost scared to get hopeful.

Everyone was quiet for a moment, listening, nothing.

Nothing.

One of the firefighters was trying to pull him back, others moving in his view of where they were digging.

“ELLA!!” Phil kept yelling, not understanding why they kept pulling him away from where he heard his little girl. He fought against the hands tugging at his arms and shoulders, trying to push through the small crowd of people between him and the voice he’d heard.

“Got them!” came a shout from where they were digging, at the same time as someone else yelled, “Get a gurney!”

Phil fought even harder, maybe hitting someone even but not knowing what he was doing, only knowing he had to get through to Dan and Ella. He finally broke free, almost falling as he tripped and ran towards the crowd surrounding the stretcher.

His right hand hit the metal rail of the gurney, his left hitting the form on it, grabbing onto the ash covered shirt only for it to crumble in his hand, the figure beneath rigid, unmoving. His eyes and thoughts finally caught up with each other, finally landing on his husband’s face, deep brown eyes staring lifelessly into his arms.  
He was laid in a fetal position, his stiff body curled around a smaller figure, the soft pink of her favorite pajamas barely still visible under the soot and dust. She was curled into her father’s arms, eyes shut tight and head tucked into his chest.

He couldn’t speak, couldn’t comprehend his own thoughts, but the noise ripped from his chest was barely human. His vision was going black, his hands reaching for a past that he’d never get back. His knees were buckling beneath him, there were voices shouting but they fell on deaf ears. Hands were reaching towards him, his body falling to the ground as the world faded into nothingness.


End file.
